At least 75 bags with dismembered human remains have been discovered in a clandestine burial pit by authorities in western Mexico since the last week.

Residents alerted the local police of a foul odor emanating from a grass field in La Primavera, a neighborhood in the municipality of Zapopan. Authorities from Jalisco Forensic Science Institute, Civil Protection and Fire Department dug through a ditch and located the first three bags last Tuesday.

The effort intensified in the following days as the team excavated through a 32-foot deep secret burial hole. During a search Sunday, the investigators unearthed more bags with body parts, bringing the number to 75.

According to Mexican outlet La Razon, Jalisco state security chief Macedonio Tamez Guajardo reported that at least eight intact corpses were among the remains although it is not clear how many bodies make up the 75 bags.

Forensic experts are working using an excavator to dig in an old 30-meter well turned into a mass grave where, up to now, 75 bags with human remains have been found, in the community La Primavera in Zapopan, near Guadalajara, state of Jalisco Mexico

Residents alerted the local police of a foul odor emanating from a grass field in La Primavera, a neighborhood in the municipality of Zapopan. Authorities from Jalisco Forensic Science Institute, Civil Protection and Fire Department dug through a ditch and located the first three bags last Tuesday.

Authorities in Jalisco, Mexico, have located 75 bags with human remains since last Tuesday

Jalisco state security chief Macedonio Tamez Guajardo reported that at least eight bodies were among the remains found in the clandestine burial grounds

Forensic experts are still trying to identify the other bodies that were dismembered.

‘It’s a very complicated forensic job because the corpses have to be put together first as soon as it is possible. Then they have to identify them,’ Tamez Guajardo.

In May, authorities in Zapopan excavated through a ditch in the neighborhood of El Campanario and removed 27 bodies from a mass grave. Investigators also found seven human craniums and several other human bones.

The area has been caught up in an ongoing turf war between Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization, the Jalisco New Generation, and the Nueva Plaza Cartel.

The nation set a record for homicides in the first half of 2019 with 17,608, up 5.3 percent compared to the same period of 2018 when 16,714 people were killed. It’s the most deadliest first half since the government started keeping official numbers in 1997.

The country of almost 125 million now sees as many as 100 killings a day nationwide.

A unit from the Jalisco Forensic Science Institute, Civil Protection and Fire Department dug through a ditch and located the first three bags last Tuesday in a grass field in La Primavera, a neighborhood in the municipality of Zapopan

First responders in the western Mexican state of Jalisco are once again tasked with having to search through mass graves where bodies have been dumped off